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On the record...

So, should that happen, you won't just be wrong, but so egregiously wrong that people will throw it back in your face for a long time to come?

Sure, lolz. Difference is I wouldn’t have any excuses like the hundreds I’m sure is coming to defend why Gobert and Minnesota wasn’t a top-4 seed or couldn’t make it out of the second round.
 
So you wait until everyone gets injured in the off-season?

I dont get your logic.

I got it when the Warriors had KD. That's different.

There is no team out West or East anyone should be scared of to the point they hold off plans of competing if they feel they are ready.

What about this Minnesota team screamed they were ready? Lmao the play-in win against a team missing their best player?

Edwards and KAT are 21 and 26. Not sure I understand the urgency they felt. Just a horrific trade on their end.
 
I hate that Jazzfanz are rooting for Gobert to win a title. That’s just one more year the jazz aren’t winning. Anyone rooting for Gobert to win is an idiot, and I was the biggest Gobert homer here. I moved on when the jazz did.
Guess I’m an idiot then. Rudy earned my fandom. I understand that “my team” needed to reset, but I will cheer for him wherever he goes as long as he continues to always give it his all. He is a unique player who I’ve always enjoyed to watch. If he wins a ring I will celebrate. If the twolves crash and burn I will likewise cheer the good fortune for “my team.”
 
For the record I love the Ant / McDaniels /Gobert combination, but don't love the KAT/ Gobert combination. Is KAT guarding on the perimeter? That could be a disaster.

If I were Minnesota I would be looking to trade KAT, although I know that won't happen.
KAT was much better and more serviceable in blitz and hedge situations. He won't be a good defender but where he hurt the Wolves was whenever they had to play him in drop which they won't ever have to do.
 
I hope Gobert wins 4 straight rings tbh
I hope the Wolves are in the lottery and we get a top 5 pick at least a couple of times while he’s there. I love Rudy, and I’m hoping he has personal success, but that the team fit with him and KAT sucks. I want the Jazz to be good as soon as possible and getting great picks out of the deal is one of the fastest ways to that reality.
 
My off season take - I get that Donny and Rudy wasn't working and that moving one of them made sense. I dont get why you move Rudy when he was all in and wanted to be here. I have nothing against Donny but it is clear he does not want to be here so move him and use the assets to stay relevant and keep making a run. Conley is still a solid PG and you could have used Donny to get a legit stretch 4 or good wing and some draft picks. Move Rudy in a year of two if that didn't work. Blowing it up is a complete crap shoot. I hope it works but wont be surprised if we dont get anyone as good as Rudy or Donny in return.
 
I want this on the record...

Pineapple on pizza is just fine... it is not delightful or disgusting. There I said it.
I agree. I think it is delightful, but that's just me and my very sophisticated palate.
 
I hope the Wolves are in the lottery and we get a top 5 pick at least a couple of times while he’s there. I love Rudy, and I’m hoping he has personal success, but that the team fit with him and KAT sucks. I want the Jazz to be good as soon as possible and getting great picks out of the deal is one of the fastest ways to that reality.
I think KAT/Gobert is an elite fit and it's going to be lethal.
 
Mine are similar and I’ve meant to make a more meaningful post on it. I’m not as optimistic on the potential return on Gobert when all is said and done. I don’t believe many people acknowledge the realistic possibility that it could equate to a mess of pottage. I also don’t know that people realize how good the Wolves can be, even legitimate contenders. We had Gobert surrounded by Mitchell, Conley and Bogdanovic, then pretended Royce was a valuable defensive piece. The Wolves surround Gobert with KAT, Edwards, DLo and McDaniels. That’s a much more talented cast, any way you slice it. I know we’re prone to poopoo it and “lol it’s teh wolvs,” but if we had that kind of talent around Gobert, we would have circle jerked ourselves into expecting a title this year.

Over the past few years I’ve consistently harped on specific problems that we had that were addressable:

1. Quin’s overemphasis on filtering to Rudy that had the unfortunate side effect of conditioning guys to not play defense at all.

2. Mentality. There was a huge mental hurdle that compounded with every historical collapse.

3. Rebounding in the clutch. We never really played a true power forward unless you count Favors, and that’s when our defense was better, but he still didn’t close and it was always a problem that Rudy ended up guarding the shooter and nobody could rebound, so we’d get smoked on giving up offensive rebounds.

4. We’ve justified obvious misses of easy Gobert targets by pointing to his offensive inefficiencies. Being able to hit Gobert with a lob is something that made people believe Exum could survive in this league.

If we would have addressed any of the above by even 25%, we’d be in a totally different situation. But how do the Wolves differ on this?

1. The entire team hasn’t been conditioned to not play defense for the past number of years. You take guys giving an average effort and then add Gobert and you’ll get some pretty great results.

2. Minnesota doesn’t have the mental baggage of collapsing in big moments in historic fashion. There’s very little pressure here. They’ll likely be underdogs and hungry.

3. Instead of having Bogdanovic or Royce next to him in the front court to grab defensive boards, he’s got ****ing KAT. He averages more rebounds per minute than Royce and Bojan combined, to say nothing if Edwards and McDaniels’ better rebounding abilities than the rest of our cast. Yes, I get that this will redistribute a bit, but this is worlds better with no hyperbole.

4. Russell will look significantly better as a point guard with Gobert. He averages 8 assists per 36 minutes. And KAT gives some massive spacing on n the perimeter while combining Gobert’s massive gravity at the rim.

The picks we get from the Wolves may well all be in the 20s. The pick swap may be irrelevant. People are talking about the Wolves giving up way too much. This is actually a nice bold move from Minnesota and this deal can legitimately put them on the map. This is the reason you cash in on potential (i.e. picks) because the hypothetical value is always higher than the actual value. An example is Donovan’s rookie year. Nobody wanted to give up the pick because we kept thinking it was Doncic. I kept telling everyone the pick won’t be that good. But, hey, it could’ve been Doncic, like Almost Ainge! We needed to parlay that hypothetical value into real value. Instead, we got… Grayson Allen. Then the cap space issue. We “kept the powder dry” to not act too prematurely. So we waited. I know many have perhaps memory-holed this, but for a couple years we were thinking of guys like Kawhi and Klay being who we could dump our money on. As time went on, we eventually hit a wall where we were going to lose cap space and our return was... Mike Conley. Now you can certainly say it was a reasonable deal at the time and the best available, but there's absolutely nobody who, had you told them a year or two before hand, that all that "dry powder" was to land Conley, that they would have been excited. The "potential" of what something can be is almost always much higher than the reality of what it becomes.

On the flip side, there's a consistent appeal to Ainge rebuilding Boston by getting the return he did on Paul Piece and Kevin Garnett. Kevin Garnett was 37 years old with a lot of NBA miles on him. Paul Pierce was 36 years old. Boston didn't have a supporting cast. The fact that Ainge was able to parlay that into what he did is the exception and not the rule. Had Boston not flipped something later this past season, it's also a totally different narrative on what Ainge did while he was there. Donovan Mitchell is 25 years old. Rudy Gobert is 30 years old. Both of these guys are under contract for three more years and both have a player option for the fourth. Kevin Garnett had two years left on his deal. Paul Pierce had one year left on his. These situations aren't even remotely close, and the amount of value Ainge sent out for what he got back isn't even remotely close to the kind of value ratio we're getting now. We're doing all of this for perhaps a slim chance that we get back to maybe being as close as we are now, with perhaps a theoretically higher ceiling. All yet to be determined. We could do well and make it out better off, but I think a lot of people are discounting how realistic of a possibility it is that this offseason may end up being a gigantic **** up because Ainge is going all-in on what worked for him once, much the same way that DL wanted to go all-in on Udoka because he felt getting Rudy and Donovan gave him that forecasting greatness.

I agree with a lot of what is said here. I think the picks UTA got are overrated, because picks are always overrated these days, and not enough has been said about the fact that we just traded two star players in their primes locked into long term deals. We broke up a really good thing, and having a bunch of late first round draft picks isn't exactly the power position it's being made out to be. I never believed Mitchell-Gobert was the weak point of the franchise, they were the strength. If there was any attempt at all to improve the team around them things would have been different, but instead the FO decided to not acknowledge any kind of weakness was a brutal failure. I could not believe how arrogant the Jazz FO was. There were so many obvious areas improve, the perimeter defense is a great example. It was brutally obvious the Jazz could not guard the perimeter....what were the answers to that? Miye Oni? Mike Conley being healthy? Rudy Gay playing small ball 5? Outrageously stupid.

I like what MIN did. People are going wild over all the picks they traded. But if there were 3 less draft picks included, we're talking about an expected value of about one decent player rotation player if MIN continues to be a playoff team. Draft picks in the 20's don't turn into Gobert, they turn into Bolmaro's, Doke's, and Kessler's. That's the reality of drafting in the 20's. Everybody creams themselves over the dream scenario where those picks somehow turn into Tatum and Brown again, but if we're going to do that, we should consider the scenario where things go as poorly. At the very least, consider the scenario where things go as expected. No one wants to talk about an average or below average outcome of future picks, they only want to consider the scenario where it turns out perfect without considering the likelihood of it happening.

Whenever there's a trade between two teams going different direction, the tanking team is anointed winners without failure. You will always win the trade when the goal is to suck. It means nothing.
 
I think KAT/Gobert is an elite fit and it's going to be lethal.

If KAT was 6'8 and had the exact same defensive/big man impact, people would love his fit with Gobert. But because he's a 7 footer people want to believe he can be a C and do the big man stuff. Truth is, he can't and he never will be able to. The Wolves were smart to not hang onto this idea that KAT is a big man who will do the big man stuff. He never was that guy and never will be. Now he can be the superstar player he is on team that isn't devoid of all the big man qualities.
 
If KAT was 6'8 and had the exact same defensive/big man impact, people would love his fit with Gobert. But because he's a 7 footer people want to believe he can be a C and do the big man stuff. Truth is, he can't and he never will be able to. The Wolves were smart to not hang onto this idea that KAT is a big man who will do the big man stuff. He never was that guy and never will be. Now he can be the superstar player he is on team that isn't devoid of all the big man qualities.
Well, at least he can rebound like a big man. I don't think people really have any clue what they're not aware of with having never seen Rudy paired with a real PF who both spreads the floor and grabs boards. What Minnesota does could very well be making a large contingent of our fandom asking "couldn't we have kept Rudy and done this?" and the answer to that will be yes, and the rest of everyone else will allay their concerns by saying that you could only do that with a hindsight bias and that "nobody could have ever known that you could have had a winning combination with Gobert, the Wolves just happened to find it!"
 
When all is said and done, my fear is that we will have traded away the third best player in franchise history, at 30 years old, who would have been a lifer, for a package of irrelevance, because we're seduced by possibility.
 
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